AT&T Closes the Shades on iPhone Sales

AT&T did something different this quarter. It didn’t reveal how many iPhones it activated for the first time in almost five years. That might be an indication it’s feeling the heat from competitors selling the device.

AT&T carried the iPhone exclusively from its launch in June 2007 until early 2011 and has consistently led the other carriers in the number of activations. But competition is growing. This quarter is the first in which T-Mobile carried the Apple device, and the fourth largest U.S. wireless carrier has been aggressively targeting AT&T in its ads.

AT&T attempted to shrug off that competition in the conference call, boasting that its service cancellation rate, called churn, is down sequentially despite the T-Mobile launch.

In its conference call with investors, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said the carrier sold 6.8 million smartphones in the quarter while “also selling more iPhones than we did a year ago.” In the year-ago quarter, the company activated 3.7 million of the devices. Verizon Wireless said it activated about 3.9 million in this year’s second quarter.

AT&T added that they typically see a spike in customers moving phone numbers to a carrier when it launches an iPhone, but the move was smaller from the T-Mobile launch than what it saw when rivals Sprint and Verizon Wireless started selling the device.

An AT&T spokeswoman said the company didn’t see a need to break out the figure now that all the major carriers are selling the popular device.

“We’ve weathered Verizon getting the iPhone, Sprint getting the iPhone and now T-Mobile,” Mr. de la Vega said in an interview. “Those days are behind us.”

On Twitter, in response to a reporter’s comment that AT&T hadn’t disclosed the iPhone figure, T-Mobile CEO John Legere responded with, “hmmmm, I wonder why.”

“Sometimes what you don’t say is more powerful than what you do say,” Mr. Legere said in an email. “Just saying.”